Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Embedded values in process and usability practice
A recent post in the CHI Consultants led to some discussion about how an organization's values may impede usability practices. One thought was that:
So we may often find ourselves in discussion with product managers or usability analysts who desire expansion of user experience-based design, but cannot gain traction within the larger organization. We may be working with design rationale or argumentation for products, guided by very clear user research feedback, finding stiff resistance from business/marketing.
Perhaps some of the values conflicts are larger, cultural values relating to "independence" or "can do" - but that assumes (to some extent) that business people actually have enough empathy with their users/customer to even ascribe such values of independence to them, the users. I think we tell ourselves these "positive" cultural values are in play, when really, its more about the exercise of organizational power within the context of values sets that just make this power easier to guide, down the well-worn paths of processes and organizational routines.
The embedded values I find common in such conflicts are those buried deep within process structures, where business processes maintain a priority of values to other practices within the organization. UCD and UX practices are continually colliding with project management (scope, cost, schedule), product management (product ideation, requirements, development), and software development (Agile, Incremental, Spiral). If you are familiar with Chris Argyris' work on espoused values vs. values-in-use, these are values-in-use, embedded within well-defined processes.
These processes, in effect, hide the actors (e.g., product or marketing managers) and their values (ranging from fairly benign: product control, project control, control of customer channels to not-so: bonuses, financial incentives, implicit and undisclosed management objectives). It becomes an infrastructure of process that actors learn to negotiate. UCD, being a service and a practice, must surpass even cost-benefit arguments to achieve wide adoption in some organizations. It must not only fit process, but must enable some other, often tacit, values to be met for other actors to benefit. I believe such values must be made explicit. For example, if usability feedback became an objective for a product manager's annual review, then we'd see rapid adoption and institutionalization.
I've made other arguments against top-down usability institutionalization because of these dynamics. With an emerging practice, and its values system, you cannot win directly against the embedded values in well-established processes. It takes time, and some bottom-up winning over until the top-down values message will be integrated into the process ecology.
" ... perhaps usability might in some way be in opposition to certain values found in American history. Some of the values that come to mind include independence, self-reliance and a "can do" attitude. Usability people often talk about the problems of convincing companies to spend money on usability. I wonder if part of companys' resistance might be conflicts of values held at some deeper level, in addition to the desire to keep expenses down."The issues surrounding organizational values pervade much of our work, nearly invisibly, but powerfully. In my research I call these embedded values, which differ by process and practice type. Within the same organization, you will find multiple points of values conflict. These points converge on many areas of process, where different goals, perspectives, incentives, and desired outcomes collide.
So we may often find ourselves in discussion with product managers or usability analysts who desire expansion of user experience-based design, but cannot gain traction within the larger organization. We may be working with design rationale or argumentation for products, guided by very clear user research feedback, finding stiff resistance from business/marketing.
Perhaps some of the values conflicts are larger, cultural values relating to "independence" or "can do" - but that assumes (to some extent) that business people actually have enough empathy with their users/customer to even ascribe such values of independence to them, the users. I think we tell ourselves these "positive" cultural values are in play, when really, its more about the exercise of organizational power within the context of values sets that just make this power easier to guide, down the well-worn paths of processes and organizational routines.
The embedded values I find common in such conflicts are those buried deep within process structures, where business processes maintain a priority of values to other practices within the organization. UCD and UX practices are continually colliding with project management (scope, cost, schedule), product management (product ideation, requirements, development), and software development (Agile, Incremental, Spiral). If you are familiar with Chris Argyris' work on espoused values vs. values-in-use, these are values-in-use, embedded within well-defined processes.
These processes, in effect, hide the actors (e.g., product or marketing managers) and their values (ranging from fairly benign: product control, project control, control of customer channels to not-so: bonuses, financial incentives, implicit and undisclosed management objectives). It becomes an infrastructure of process that actors learn to negotiate. UCD, being a service and a practice, must surpass even cost-benefit arguments to achieve wide adoption in some organizations. It must not only fit process, but must enable some other, often tacit, values to be met for other actors to benefit. I believe such values must be made explicit. For example, if usability feedback became an objective for a product manager's annual review, then we'd see rapid adoption and institutionalization.
I've made other arguments against top-down usability institutionalization because of these dynamics. With an emerging practice, and its values system, you cannot win directly against the embedded values in well-established processes. It takes time, and some bottom-up winning over until the top-down values message will be integrated into the process ecology.
